I do not wish to imply, of course, that an industrial age or the wage system furnishes an ideal condition for race relationships; for in the North the Negro's struggle for survival in the competitive field is accompanied, as I have shown elsewhere, by the severest suffering. The condition of Negroes in Indianapolis, New York, and Philadelphia is in some ways worse than it is anywhere in the South. But, say what we will, the wage system is one step upward from the old feudalism. The Negro is treated less like a slave and more like a man in the North. It is for this reason that Negroes, no matter what their difficulties of making a living in the North, rarely wish to go back to the South. And as the South develops industrially it will approximate more nearly to Northern conditions. In Southern cities to-day, because of industrial development, the Negro is treated more like a man than he is in the country; and this is one reason why Negroes crowd into the cities and can rarely be persuaded to go back into the country--unless they can own their own land. But the South is rapidly shaking off the remnants of the old feudalism. Development of mines and forests, the extension of manufacturing, the introduction of European immigrants, the inflow of white Northerners, better schools, more railroads and telephones, are all helping to bring the South up to the economic standard of the North. There will be a further break-up of baronial tenant farming, the plantation store will disappear, the ruinous credit system will be abolished, and there will be a widespread appearance of independent farm-owners, both white and black. This will all tend to remove the personal and sentimental attitude of the old Southern life; the Negro will of necessity be judged more and more as a man, not as a slave or dependent. In short, the country, South and North, will become economically more homogeneous. But even when the South reaches the industrial development of the North the Negro problem will not be solved; it is certainly not solved in New York or Philadelphia, where industrial development has reached its highest form. The prejudice in those cities, as I have shown, has been growing more intense as Negro population increased. What, then, will happen? _Two Elements in Every Race Problem_